Gone By Lunchtime: 10th Birthday Party

Three elections, five prime ministers, several hundred emotional junior staffers and 10 years ago, the podcast Gone By Lunchtime was born screaming into the political world.

Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas have since then been huddling together to make sense and nonsense of political matters in Aotearoa. Join them on an odyssey down memory lane, recalling their own journeys to fronting New Zealand’s Only Podcast™ taking in everything from Jacindamania to suburban pigeons, from crown-Māori relations to the Bad Boys of Brexit, from coalition building to piss-filled Zorbs.

All that, plus a surprise guest, and we'll exclusively reveal precisely how election year is going to pan out.

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Toby Manhire is an Auckland-based writer, editor and broadcaster. He is editor-at-large at The Spinoff and host of podcasts including Juggernaut 2: The Story of the Fourth National Government and Gone By Lunchtime.

Annabelle Lee-Mather (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Māmoe) is a journalist and producer who’s spent the last 25 years working in media, mostly by saying yes to things before thinking them through. She created The Hui, The Casketeers, Hongi To Hāngī and a bunch of other shows her kids refuse to watch.

Annabelle now runs Aotearoa Media Collective with her work wife Mihingarangi Forbes producing the long form current affairs series Mata Reports and the NZ Wars series. She sings the high part in the Gone By Lunchtime trio, slightly off-key, but with conviction.

Ben Thomas is a political commentator and director of Capital Government Relations and Communications, a Wellington and Auckland based public affairs firm. He is a former political editor of the National Business Review and was a press secretary in the previous National government. He writes a regular column for The Post and Stuff.